iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A huge milestone: Fearless SIMD 1.0 is published: linebender.org/blog/fearles.... This was a real collaboration, thanks especially to Sergey Davidoff for pushing this over the line, Laurenz Stampfl, Andrew Jakubowicz, valadaptive, Benjamin Saunders, and Daniel McNab.

linebender.org

Fearless SIMD v1.0 is here

27715

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I just posted a blog post on my hyperbezier curve: linebender.org/blog/hyperbe... I've actually been working on this for years, and only recently figured out a solution to the parameter mapping problem. I think this curve is potentially better than cubic Béziers for 2D vector graphic design.

A plot of two roughly S-shaped curves. In gray is a cubic Bézier, and the Bézier control points are shown. In blue is an example of the hyperbezier, with roughly similar shape but much smoother curvature variation. There is also a "curvature comb" in green.

212325

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

There's a lot here worth thinking about, and it puts in words some of the feelings I was having that motivated me to leave Google. I'm *also* quite worried about more direct autocratic control of US-based AI, there are signs of this starting to happen.

0183

Reposted by Raph Levien

Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I spent the last month obsessed with finding colors that can't be displayed on a conventional screen. This is what I found. moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w...

moultano.wordpress.com

Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You

An atlas of the vibrance of the real world

471128379

Reposted by Raph Levien

Mara Bos @mara.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Just like last year, we replaced a whole wall of movie posters with our own punny movie posters at the cinema where RustWeek 2026 took place. I designed seven new posters for this year's event. See the thread below 👇

Nine movie posters displayed next to each other.

212433

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

I will be at RustWeek in Utrecht next week! Really looking forward to meeting people.

0171

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

As a fun project, I implemented race-the-beam image decompression on RP2350 with DVI output. I can get 1280x720 at 60Hz with a bit of overclocking. PR at github.com/DusterTheFir... I'll probably write this up, the idea is pretty cool.

A photo of a monitor, which displays a high quality photo of a yellow flower, as well as the board that drives the display, an Adafruit RP2350 feather. Also in the frame is a small Ferris plushy toy, and the right edge of a laptop, which displays the assembly language code for the image decompression algorithm.

0201

Reposted by Raph Levien

Saltstone Studios ⚓️The Hearth and Harbour⚓️ @saltstonestudios.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Our upcoming game The Hearth and Harbour is fully 2D, but with some neat tricks we’ve made it look 3D. Ethan, our environment artist, did this with a special type of texture called a Normal Map. (Thread! 1/7)

271405375

Reposted by Raph Levien

Sebastian Aaltonen @sebaaltonen.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

My "No Graphics API" blog post is live! Please repost :) www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap... I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".

sebastianaaltonen.com

No Graphics API — Sebastian Aaltonen

Graphics APIs and shader languages have significantly increased in complexity over the past decade. It’s time to start discussing how to strip down the abstractions to simplify development, improve pe...

19475194

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

As we go into the holiday season, there's lots of progress in Linebender from the previous month: linebender.org/blog/tmil-23/. Among other things, blur filters in Vello CPU (with GPU acceleration on the roadmap), SIMD progress, and a new port of Runebender to Xilem.

linebender.org

Linebender in November 2025

1140

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

This is indeed an excellent talk, and I think contains the seeds of a path forward through the AI thicket. When tested against only "vibes," AI can generate reams of slop. But when tested against hard ground truth, in this case rigorous mathematical formalism, possibilities abound.

0121

Reposted by Raph Levien

Steve Klabnik @steveklabnik.com · 13/11/2025

“We adopted #rustlang for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density ... with Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one.” security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust...

security.googleblog.com

Rust in Android: move fast and fix things

Posted by Jeff Vander Stoep, Android Last year, we wrote about why a memory safety strategy that focuses on vulnerability prevention in ...

332290

Reposted by Raph Levien

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

😎😎😎😎 GOOD THINGS CAN STILL HAPPEN 😎😎😎😎

627561306684

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

My talk on "I want a good parallel language" is now up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-eV... Slides here: docs.google.com/presentation... Thanks Arthur Gleckler and BALISP for hosting the talk!

youtube.com

I Want a Good Parallel Language, by Raph Levien (BALISP)

YouTube video by Arthur Gleckler

2242

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

I'm thrilled that Laurenz Stampfl, a student at ETH Zurich, has completed his Masters degree, and has published the thesis: ethz.ch/content/dam/... 1/2

ethz.ch

1101

Reposted by Raph Levien

Erin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 22/10/2025

There was already a *lot* going on with Bluesky, and now it's under even more pressure. I wrote about how I think about moderation, affordances, expectations, human needs, and powerful trolls for @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/trump-admini...

techpolicy.press

Trump Administration's Arrival on Bluesky Highlights Growing Pains for Open Networks | TechPolicy.Press

The administration’s antagonistic entry to the platform is best understood as a game of chicken, writes Erin Kissane.

10254103

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Some updates from the Linebender ecosystem: we've published our monthly update blog (linebender.org/blog/tmil-21/), and also released fearless_simd 0.3.0 (github.com/linebender/f...). The train keeps rolling!

linebender.org

Linebender in September 2025

083

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

I gave a seminar entitled "How Rust won: The quest for performant, reliable software" at the Topos Institute on Jun 3, and the video (youtu.be/k_-6KI3m31M) is now published. I hope people enjoy it!

youtu.be

[Berkeley Seminar] Raph Levien | How Rust won: the quest for performant, reliable software

YouTube video by Topos Institute

0162

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

We have our usual monthly update for Linebender: linebender.org/blog/tmil-19/ A lot of good progress, especially on the renderer, and fearless_simd is coming along well. Also some personal news: I'm leaving Google and taking a new role at Canva, moving to Australia in January.

linebender.org

Linebender in July 2025

1305

Reposted by Raph Levien

Opal @opalescentopal.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

14386183601

Reposted by Raph Levien

George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

When I was little, the U.S. military came to our home at gunpoint and took me and my family away. We were imprisoned for years in barbed wire camps simply because we were Japanese American. I have spent my life telling that story, hoping it would never be repeated.

15646839820874

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Cool to see this work happening, and look forward to some nice GPU compute acceleration for path rendering!

0101

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Topnotch reporting from Marisa Kabas on a very important topic. It's maddening that mainstream news sources are not meeting the moment. Support independent journalism by subscribing.

020

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Last week I did a research retreat on stroke expansion yielding a cubic Bézier approximation. It went well. I wrote a summary: docs.google.com/document/d/1... That document requires a certain amount of context and background to understand fully, but hopefully some people will find it interesting.

docs.google.com

Research retreat 2025-06-16 summary

Research retreat 2025-06-16 summary I did a research retreat week focused on cubic-to-cubic stroke expansion. Overall I made lots of progress on both practical and theoretical issues, but the problem ...

1196

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

I wrote linebender.org/blog/a-plan-... and published it over the weekend. I'm excited about pushing Rust SIMD to be more usable, and open to feedback about the specifics of the proposal.

linebender.org

A plan for SIMD

0273

Reposted by Raph Levien

Trifecta Tech Foundation @trifectatech.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

Our data compression projects aim to offer best-in-class performance. @tweedegolf.bsky.social‬'s Folkert de Vries shows how SIMD helps us to speed up zlib-rs in compare256, a crucial part of the compression algorithm that finds repetitions in the input. trifectatech.org/blog/simd-in... #rustlang

trifectatech.org

SIMD in zlib-rs (part 2): compare256 - Trifecta Tech Foundation

In part 1 of the "SIMD in zlib-rs" series, we've seen that, with a bit of nudging, autovectorization can produce optimal code for some problems.

063

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

This hits close to home. The PhET people are brilliant and dedicated, and we've shared ideas and some code on 2D rendering technology. One tiny facet of a great loss.

011

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

New blog post up on the state of SIMD in Rust: linebender.org/blog/towards... It's an update on my previous blog post from 7 years ago, and also links to a podcast I recently recorded with Andre Popovitch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Wc.... I think it's a good intro to SIMD, and I had fun doing it.

linebender.org

Towards fearless SIMD, 7 years later

0200

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

I've now published my blog post, "I want a good parallel computer." raphlinus.github.io/gpu/2025/03/... . Thanks much to all the feedback on the draft, I'd like to think I've clarified some things that might have been confusing.

raphlinus.github.io

I want a good parallel computer

The GPU in your computer is about 10 to 100 times more powerful than the CPU, depending on workload. For real-time graphics rendering and machine learning, you are enjoying that power, and doing those...

26218

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

New blog post up on the Rust font loader now shipping in Chrome. I only had a small part in this personally but am proud of the team's work. developer.chrome.com/blog/memory-...

developer.chrome.com

Memory safety for web fonts | Blog | Chrome for Developers

Learn how and why the Chrome team has replaced FreeType with Skrifa.

310726

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

I'm working on a blog post "I want a good parallel computer", have a draft up (github.com/raphlinus/ra...), and am very open to criticism before I publish more widely. Feel free to respond here, comment on the PR, or contact me privately.

github.com

170

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Really looking forward to seeing you in Utrecht if you can make it.

0101

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

I have a talk in RustWeek on developments in Vello to make 2D vector path rendering easier to integrate into other applications. Hope to see you in Utrecht!

0111

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

This is Enkhuizen beach when I visited there in 2013. It's the town in the Netherlands where I was born, something I've been thinking about lately. I have other beach photos of Maui (family was there recently) and Costa Rica, but today this is my choice.

A photograph taken of Enkhuizerstrand (Enkhuizen beach in the Netherlands) in October 2013. The sand is in the lower left, and the waterline is a strong diagonal. Trees are in the distance, and the sky is cloudy. Two people are walking along the beach, very small figures in the composition.

050

Reposted by Raph Levien

Erin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 11/02/2025

I wrote about the thing I am looking for to make sense of the moment so that I can stop posting about it. (First post on my personal site in some time.) erinkissane.com/against-entr...

erinkissane.com

Against Entropy - Erin Kissane's small internet website

What I am doing during the explosive disassembly of the US administrative state and what I want, and why.

1016327

Reposted by Raph Levien

danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Many of us are aghast at the unprecedented dismantlement of the US administrative state. All around me, people are trying to connect what’s happening to historical events. Here's my attempt to offer a few possible frames for sense-making right now: www.zephoria.org/thoughts/arc...

A commissioned image from artist Pawel Kuczynski depicting the American flag as a series of pipes leaking data with workers trying to repair it.

713440

Reposted by Raph Levien

Gen Michael Hayden @genmhayden.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

Fellow NSA - National Security Agency veterans. Look at what’s happened at the National Cryptologic Museum. They covered up with brown paper the photos of Women in American Cryptology. All in response to President Trump’s anti-diversity executive order.

918124046670

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

December was vacation time for many of us (myself included), but Linebender did impressive work on a number of fronts: releases of the Color and Peniko crates, progress on text layout and the masonry widget set, and a new Kompari crate for image comparison. Read more at linebender.org/blog/tmil-12/

linebender.org

Linebender in December 2024

1132

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I put a list of color resources onto the Linebender wiki: linebender.org/wiki/color-r.... I think it's a good set, but don't claim it's exhaustive, so if you've got more, please add them to the wiki.

linebender.org

Color resources

2103

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

crates.io/crates/color 0.1 is now published. There's support for all the predefined color spaces in CSS Color Level 4, some cool gradient math, and more. I'm excited where this will go.

crates.io

crates.io: Rust Package Registry

1302

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

Linebender in October is now published: linebender.org/blog/tmix-10/ . The big news is that resvg has moved into the Linebender organization. In the short term, our goal is to keep the maintenance of the project going, including related crates. As part of the migration, we're relicensing from... 1/2

linebender.org

Linebender in October 2024: resvg stewardship

1103

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 05/11/2024

I'm on a social media fast, which is why you haven't heard much from me, but I did want to share one cool thing. Our stuff has been 8-bit RGB for a while, but it's clear that's not going to cut it in an HDR world. Inspired by bevy_color, I've started a color crate: github.com/linebender/c...

github.com

GitHub - linebender/color: Color in Rust.

Color in Rust. Contribute to linebender/color development by creating an account on GitHub.

0131

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 27/07/2024

A video of the GPU stroke expansion paper at HPG 2024 is up: youtu.be/qPmwbp7A3BQ?... I'm happy with the way it turned out, and there's some interesting Q&A at the end also.

youtu.be

HPG 2024: Day 1 - July 26th

Full program: https://www.highperformancegraphics.org/2024/program/

020

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 26/07/2024

I'll be presenting our paper on GPU-friendly stroke expansion with Arman Uguray at HPG 2024 today in Denver. We've put together a landing page with a 40 second "fast forward video," a link to the paper, and a fun interactive demo (written in Rust, based on xilem_web). linebender.org/gpu-stroke-e...

linebender.org

GPU-friendly Stroke Expansion

060

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 11/07/2024

I've just put together a 40 second "fast forward" video for our High Performance Graphics talk later this month: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkeq... The animations were all hand-coded in Rust and rendered in Vello in real time. It feels like a preview of the power to support high-powered creative tools.

youtube.com

GPU-Friendly Stroke Expansion

A 40 second "fast forward" video for our High Performance Graphics paper on GPU-Friendly Stroke Expansion.The paper will be presented at High Performance Gra...

052

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 08/05/2024

I'll be giving my talk on Xilem at #rustnl2024 this afternoon (14:40 CEST). It'll be on the conference livestream: 2024.rustnl.org/live/ There'll be a lot to present. Among other things, we did the 0.1 release of Xilem last night. Things are moving!

2024.rustnl.org

🔴 Live - RustNL 2024

RustNL 2024, The Netherlands - May 7 & 8 2024

050

Raph Levien @raphlinus.bsky.social · 02/05/2024

A major project I've been working on for many months is rendering vector graphics strokes on GPU. @armansito and I recently wrote a paper on our techniques, and it's now available on arXiv (and also submitted to a relevant conference): arxiv.org/abs/2405.00127. Fingers crossed it gets accepted!

arxiv.org

GPU-friendly Stroke Expansion

Vector graphics includes both filled and stroked paths as the main primitives. While there are many techniques for rendering filled paths on GPU, stroked paths have proved more elusive. This paper...

041